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The oldest surviving inmate of the Dachau concentration camp has died at the age of 100.
Leon Stepniak, a Polish priest, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 in the village of Klebowiec.
He spent the next five years in Dachau, a site in south-east Germany which was the first concentration camp to be opened by the Nazi goverment.
After being released at the end of the Second World War, he returned to Poznan in Poland, where he died over the weekend.

The clergyman was well-known for a speech he made at a commemoration to mark the liberation of Dachau.
He told the audience that the camp's legacy should not be as a demand for revenge or recrimination, but as a sign of reconciliation.

Mr Stepniak also said that Dachau's continued existence should serve as a reminder to ensure that no similar atrocity ever happens again.

KZ-Dachau was established near the town of Dachau in Bavaria in March 1933.
Heinrich Himmler, then Munich's chief of police, described the site as 'the first concentration camp for political prisoners'.
During the war, it was a leading centre for the extermination of the Nazis' enemies, with around 32,000 people believed to have been killed there in total.


Mr Stepniak was one of at least 3,000 Catholic priests and bishops imprisoned at Dachau.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305714/Polish-priest-oldest-surviving-prisoner-Dachau-concentration-camp-dies-aged-100.html#ixzz2PslNxfzd
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Rest in Peace.

Glad to pay tribute to a man of peace and reconciliation.

Gwynne

Rest in Peace ....one of many heroes if ever there was one...

Thanks for the link Rose

that is genuine sad news
their storys must be re told over and over again to future generations so that a similler horror can not happen in the future

Thank you for that Rose.

My oldest friend's father was a Polish Jew - he lost a wife and child in a concentration camp. I have the most enormous respect and admiration for those who suffered at that dreadful time.

Peace be with him.


Cx

I was fortunate enough to live in West Berlin for a while and it was whilst there that I researched/discovered a lot about that dreadful era.
The one thing that sticks in my mind is the number of stories of bravery, selflessness, reconciliation and hope.

I can't imagine, what life must of been like in a concentration camp, my Uncle, aged 89 was a prisoner of war, and he doesn't talk about his time there.

To live to be 100, after all that he went through is amazing. May his next 100 years in his heaven, be full of happiness <3

Rest in Peace Leon <3

thanks Rose - true hero, may he rest in peace, he deserves it - and may the suffering of the thousands upon thousands of victims never ever be forgotten